ESCHATOLOGY

Outline

I. Introduction

Eschatology (Gr. ἔσχατος, G2274, last, and λόγος, G3364, science or subject) is a term used to designate the teaching from Scripture concerning the final consummation of all things. It is assumed throughout Scripture that history is the scene of God’s redemptive activity and therefore, is moving toward a new order when sin and evil will be overcome, and God will “become all in all.” It is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of eschatology to Christian faith: life without faith is empty, and faith without hope is impossible. If the “eschatology” of modern science—death for the individual, death for the species, death for the entire system of wheeling suns which we call the universe—is the only truth by which man can live, then indeed “let us eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” The Christian, however, does not believe that death is the last word. For him the resurrection of Christ has robbed death of its victory and brought hope and immortality to light. It is the content of this hope that the Christian doctrine of eschatology sets forth.

II. Eschatology of the OT

A. The eschatology of the people of God. In the OT one may distinguish between individual and national eschatology; the latter, in many passages, being enlarged to embrace not only Israel, but the Gentile nations as well. As the hope of Israel is the predominant eschatological note in the OT the discussion of eschatology will begin from the broader perspective of an eschatology of the people of God.

The hope of God’s chosen people is the fundamental strand of OT teaching regarding the future. Eschatology is the climax of the history of Israel’s salvation. God, who led the fathers out of Egypt and gave them the Promised Land, will eventually triumph over all His and their enemies; He will secure to His people complete fellowship with Himself, and eventually establish His dominion over the whole earth. Thus the promise made to Abraham, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3, KJV), ultimately will be fulfilled. (If for “be blessed,” one trs., “bless themselves” [RSV], i.e., wish that they might enjoy the same blessings as Abraham and his seed, it makes little difference in the ultimate meaning.) The fact that this hope is the consummation of history does not mean that it is something man will achieve by his own efforts or that man can even calculate when and how it will come about. It is rather the coming of Yahweh, who will miraculously intervene and create all things new, that makes possible the full realization of the covenant promises. For the most part, the prophets tended to depict this age of final salvation after the analogy of God’s former acts of salvation history; the glorious future of Israel would be continuous with current history as they knew it. As time went on, more and more stress was laid on the qualitative difference between the present historical order and the new age of eschatological fulfillment. This is particularly true of Daniel and the later apocalyptic writers.

1. The day of the Lord. Perhaps the most characteristic formula in the OT to describe the eschatological drama is “the day of the Lord.” The term “day” is used in Arab. for a time of battle; so in Heb., “the day of Midian” (Isa 9:4). In popular parlance, the day of the Lord is the time (not necessarily a literal day) when Yahweh will interpose on behalf of His people to save them from their enemies and alleviate the miseries that burden their lives. It is the time when the remnant, loyal to Yahweh, shall be delivered (Isa 6:13; Amos 9:9). It is the day when He shall pour out His spirit on all flesh and all who call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered (Joel 2:28-32).

This does not mean—and the prophets make the point clear—that the day of the Lord is a time of salvation alone. On the contrary, when the Lord shall visit the righteous with salvation, He shall also discomfit the wicked with judgment “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light; as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?” (Amos 5:18-20). The reason that the day of the Lord is a day of doom is that the God who saves is also a God of holiness who punishes the rebellious sinners, and Israel had thus sinned (Amos 4:12). Before the Exile, the note of judgment predominated, though the note of salvation shone through (Isa 1:25, 26; Hos 2:16f.), esp. in the latter part of Isaiah. After the Exile, the theme of salvation took the ascendancy (Ezek passim).

Often the day of the Lord is given wider scope, to include the Gentile nations along with Israel in the realization of the divine purpose. Sometimes nations were used as instruments of God’s judgment on Israel (Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians), although they too would be judged in turn by the Lord (cf. the prophecies against the nations in Isa, Jer, Ezek, Amos, Nah, and Hab). As in the prophecies concerning Israel, salvation was also the purpose of God toward the nations. The reign of God shall be extended “until all the earth is full of his glory” (Isa 2:2, 3; 42:4; 60; Jer 12:14-16; 16:19-21; Ezek 16:53f.; Mic 4:1-5). These events will come to pass in the “latter days” (Isa 2:2; Jer 48:47; Hos 3:5).

In Daniel’s prophecy of the four kingdoms, these kingdoms were broken in pieces by a massive stone cut out of the mountains without hands (Dan 2:44, 45), which was to become a great mountain to fill the whole earth (Dan 2:34), symbolizing God’s everlasting kingdom. In the same vein is the beautiful prophecy of Malachi (1:11), “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations...says the Lord of hosts.” Although the Gentiles shall be made fellow heirs of Israel’s salvation, Jewish nationalism will still prevail. Israel will inherit the Gentiles (Isa 54:3). “The kingdom...shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High” (Dan 7:27). The nations will do homage to Israel—“they will make supplication to you, saying: ‘God is with you only, and there is no other, no god besides him’” (Isa 45:14; cf. Isa 49:23).

Though the day of the Lord is principally concerned with God’s coming to mankind for salvation or judgment, it is also a time when the order of nature itself will be shaken with great convulsions. Scenes of gloom and dissolution are not uncommon in the prophets (Isa 2:12ff., chs. 13, 14; Hos 10:8; Joel 2, 3; Amos 5:18; Zeph 1). Along with these terrifying visions, there are those that picture a new paradisiacal order in which “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isa 35:1 KJV). “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid..., the lion shall eat straw like the ox....They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain [says the Lord], for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isa 11:6-9 KJV). The involvement of the order of nature in the eschatological drama, set forth in rapturous poetic language, expresses the essential truth that the physical world was created for man and, therefore, shares in the judgment and renewal that is his final prospect. The ancient Hebrews knew nothing of the Gr. concept of salvation by flight from the body and the world of which man is a part.

When the prophets speak of the day of the Lord, they regard it as near, esp. threatening judgment (Isa 13:6; Joel 1:15; 2:1). Of course, its exact time was known to no man; because it was a free act of God, it was not predictable as some event in the natural course of things. A presentiment of its nearness was awakened by the moral lapses and seemingly incorrigible apostasy of the people. Man’s insensibility to the divine majesty seemed so frightful that the Lord must surely intervene (Isa 13; Joel 1:2; Zeph).

In this regard it should be noted that some prophecies were actually fulfilled, at least in part, by the proximate sequel of events. In the war with Syria and Ephraim (743/33), e.g., Isaiah predicted the defeat of the enemy though the hostile threat remained to Judah (Isa 7:5-7, 16; 8:4). In the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib (701), he prophesied its collapse (37:33-35). It was esp. the threat of Nebuchadnezzar that tended to give historic definition to the visions of eschatological doom. The eschatological dimension is actualized in the ensuing events, so that some scholars speak of the captivity and exile of Israel as an “actualizing” eschatology. Similarly, the restoration of Israel was not only a future hope but, in a limited way, a present reality in the person of Cyrus, the king of the Persians (Isa 41:2, 3, 25; 44:28; 45:1; etc.) This proximate fulfillment of the prophetic visions of judgment, in the calamities that overtook Israel from the N, and of salvation, in the restoration under Cyrus of Persia, gave meaning to the sense of imminence that informed much of the eschatological vision of the prophets.

2. The messianic hope. The messianic hope is an important element of OT doctrine, though the figure of the Messiah did not have the central place in OT eschatology that Jesus had in the eschatology of the NT. The Redeemer, in whom the pious of the OT hoped was God—“Deliverance belongs to the Lord” (Ps 3:8), and if the Messiah is a redeemer, or a savior, it is because of His divine nature.

The word “messiah” means “anointed.” In the OT the word is applied to the priests, but esp. the kings, and it is this latter usage of royalty that has left the most pronounced traces in the eschatological hope of the Jewish people. By virtue of the oil of anointing, which symbolized his investiture with the Spirit of God, the king was a sacred person, consecrated as Yahweh’s vicegerent in Israel. From the time of Nathan’s oracle, the hope of Israel was fixed on the dynasty of David (2 Sam 7:12-16). With the humiliation of that dynasty by the Chaldeans, though the faith of Israel was severely tried, it survived in the hope of a future king who would be the true servant of the Lord, and bring justice, light, and deliverance to all nations (Isa 42:1-4, 6, 7), and to extend the covenant of God to all the earth. Visions of this coming Servant are delineated in a section of Isaiah sometimes known as “Servant Songs” (Isa 42:1-7; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12). In these passages is a certain fluid movement between the thought that Israel is the Servant and that some individual is the Servant. The corporate personality progresses toward the individual, as the prophecies progress, which justifies the classic Christian application of these Servant prophecies to the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the second chapter of his gospel (v. 32), Luke quotes Isaiah 49:6, where the mission of the Servant is expressly described: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Another prophecy that belongs to the messianic strand of OT eschatology is Daniel 7:11ff., which refers to one coming on the clouds of heaven like unto “a son of man,” having an everlasting dominion. “Son of man” appears to have been the most common self-designation of the Lord. It must be remembered that the OT does not clearly coordinate all these categories—“seed of David,” “Servant of the Lord,” “son of man”—as is done this side of the Incarnation. But they all have their place, even though at times they be ambiguous, in the eschatological hope of Israel.

3. The restoration of Israel. The interpretation of Israel’s hope of restoration to its own land is difficult to achieve from a Christian perspective. It is, however, a prominent feature of OT prophecy. Just as the judgment of God upon His people was never separated, in the prophetic vision, from the historical event of the Exile, so the salvation of the people was never separated from the historical event of the return to the land. God said to the N: “Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth” (Isa 43:6). Restored to the land, the people would enjoy everlasting felicity and righteousness, together with all earthly blessings (Amos 9:11-15). In the eyes of the nations they were in truth the people of God (Isa 43:2ff.).

There can be little question of the meaning of similar prophecies of restoration to the land. Though the essential element was the spiritual beatitude of the righteous through God’s making His abode in their midst, nonetheless this noble vision involved an external condition of the people in the glorified land of Canaan. If the final meaning of the OT is revealed in the New, what shall be made of the fact that the NT says nothing of the restoration of Israel to the land? Paul, the only NT writer to discuss Israel’s future in detail (Rom 9-11), deals only with the spiritual aspect of the promises made to the fathers. For Paul, the salvation of Israel is that they shall be grafted back into the olive tree into which the Gentiles have been grafted, through faith in Christ (Rom 11:13-36). It seems best, therefore, to take the many prophecies of restoration to the land as having their literal fulfillment in the return under Ezra and Nehemiah, when the Temple and city of Jerusalem were restored; and to construe their final fulfillment in terms of those blessings of a heavenly land, secured to all God’s people in Jesus Christ. The present-day return of Israel to Pal. should indeed give one pause; yet it is difficult to see in this interesting development a clear fulfillment of prophecy, as long as the Israeli remain a nation in unbelief and their prosperity in the land is more a tribute to their technological ingenuity than to any divine, supernatural act of eschatological redemption.

B. The eschatology of the individual. As can be seen from the above, the central themes of OT eschatology—the advent of God, His judgment of the nations, and establishment of the final kingdom of righteousness—are themes that concern mankind as a whole. What of the individual? Is his life, no matter how prolonged and blessed, yet cut off by death? Does he live only in the memory of his descendants? Is the state of beatitude only for those living in “that day” when God shall create new heavens and a new earth?

It is difficult for the Christian to understand the limited place that is given in the OT to the individual, and the emphasis on the solidarity of the larger unit of the household, of the tribe, of the nation, and of the race. In the OT, the happiness of the upright man consisted in a long life in the land that the Lord had given him, and his hope in a pious and numerous seed that should live after him. Yet the Israelites did not suppose that the individual became extinct at death; from earliest times they possessed a belief in the shadowy existence in Sheol.

The etymology of the word (sh^eōl) is difficult. It prob. derives from the same root as the words for the “hollow” of the hand, or a “hollow” place in the land. Sheol is a subterranean region, or pit, where the dead subsist in a shadowy and attenuated form; it is only a feeble reflection of life on earth. Though under God’s dominion (Ps 139:8; Amos 9:2), God has withdrawn His Spirit from the denizens of that forgotten land, so that they lack energy and the vital spirit of life, being consigned to a flaccid and vacuous existence as shades. The abode of the dead is called “silence” (Ps 94:17); “the land of forgetfulness” (Ps 88:12); the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5). Death levels all men to a common fate; it brings them to a state where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest (Job 3:17). Samuel complained at being “disquieted” by the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28:15). The most threatening aspect of death for the righteous is the fear that they will be cut off from God. “In death there is no remembrance of thee; in Sheol who can give thee praise?” (Ps 6:5). “For Sheol cannot thank thee, death cannot praise thee; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness” (Isa 38:18).

Unlike the NT, the OT teaches that both the righteous and the wicked go to Sheol, and the factor of reward and retribution is not the paramount consideration. Yet it would be too much to say that the same fate awaits the righteous as the wicked, who perish under the bane of the divine displeasure. “The wicked shall depart to Sheol” (Ps 9:17), and the proud and haughty shall be brought down to Sheol, to the pit (Isa 14:15; Ezek 32:23). Scholars have frequently seen the penal character of Sheol also in Psalms 49 and 73. On the other hand, the fervent prayer, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his!” (Num 23:10) would seem to imply more than a desire for a prolonged and happy old age on earth.

It seems not too much to say, then, that the hope of the righteous is for a deliverance from Sheol, and that, as time went on, the deliverance was seen to imply a resurrection. The flesh of the righteous shall rest in hope, because God will not leave his soul in Sheol, but rather show him the path of life, the joy of divine presence, and the pleasures at God’s right hand (Ps 16:9-11, cf. Ps 17:15; 49:15; 73:24). Job raised the question (Job 14:14), “If a man die, shall he live again?” In the light of this question, it is plausible to tr. the strong affirmation of faith in Job 19:25f. as involving the vision of God “from the flesh.” Isaiah 26:19 strikes a clear note of resurrection, and in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones (37:1-14), surely the element of individual resurrection cannot be excluded. Finally, in Daniel 12:2 for the first time the resurrection of the wicked, as well as the righteous, is affirmed: “And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” The implication this prophecy contains concerning the judgment of the wicked is found as early as Isaiah 66:24, “They shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” This threat to the wicked, together with the hope of the righteous man that God will receive him to glory (Ps 73:24), summarizes the limits of personal eschatology in the OT.

III. Eschatology of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

A. Introduction. The Apoc. and Pseudep. are extra-canonical books written from the beginning of the 2nd cent. b.c. to the close of the 1st cent. a.d. Some do not touch upon the eschatological theme; others dwell upon it in great detail. Whereas many writings in the intertestamental period follow the basic perspective of the OT and conceive of the eschatological fulfillment of the divine purpose as continuous with this present age, others are strongly apocalyptic, postulating two distinct and separate ages; the present evil age under the sway of Satan, and therefore beyond redemption, and the eternal age to come, under divine dominion. Describing this eschatological hope, these books indulge in vividly imaginative representations, characterized by an increased emphasis on the individual and the afterlife. Many of these representations are developed from the OT, others reflect Babylonian, Persian, and even Greek influence. Although often conflicting with the teachings of the NT, and far from uniform within themselves, these documents constitute a nexus between the eschatology of the OT and the NT, with its heightened emphasis on the individual and its extensive use of imagery.

B. The afterlife. The realm of the dead is Sheol, a dreary, subterranean chamber in the earth. In the postexilic lit. it became a temporary rather than permanent abode, esp. for the righteous, who will leave it at the resurrection (Pss Sol 14:6, 7; 2 Macc 7:9; 14:46). In those sources that limit the resurrection to the righteous alone, Sheol is thought of as a place of punishment for the wicked who remain incarcerated there. The author of 2 Maccabees (2 Macc 12:43-45) wrote that Judas Maccabeus prayed for his fellows who had fallen in battle, and who were presently in Sheol. This passage has been used as a proof text for the Roman Catholic doctrine of prayers for the dead in purgatory, though Sheol and purgatory are by no means the same.

When Sheol is thought of exclusively as a place of punisment for the wicked, the abode of the righteous is sometimes thought of as Paradise. According to the Apocalypse of Moses 33:4, when Adam died his soul was taken to Paradise. In like manner, in the Testament of Job, Job was taken by the angel of death to the throne of God’s glory, to where his children had preceded him. In Baruch 21:23f.; 30:2; 4 Ezra 7:95, the souls of the righteous go to heavenly “treasuries” or chambers, awaiting the resurrection, whereas the souls of the wicked descend into Sheol.

C. The messiah and his kingdom. In the intertestamental lit. the messiah is sometimes presented as a passive ruler over a transfigured Israel (Enoch 83-90); at other times he is a warrior who slays his enemies with his own hands (Sib Oracles 3:652-660l), or by the word of his mouth, ruling in justice and holiness (Pss Sol 17:27, 31, 37, 39, 41). In Enoch 37-70 he is the supernatural ruler and judge of all mankind, the most sublime view found outside the canon.

As for the messiah’s kingdom, it is sometimes eternal, on a transformed earth (Enoch 1-36), inaugurated by a resurrection and a final judgment; at other times it is of temporary duration, followed by these events (Enoch 91-104; Pss Sol 17, 18; Jub, As Moses, Wisdom, etc.). In some of the lit. of this period (4 Ezra), no mention is made of a messianic kingdom. Many of the intertestamental books reiterate the OT promise that Israel will return from the dispersion to her own land.

D. The resurrection. Because it is only just that the righteous dead should share in the messianic kingdom, the idea of a resurrection became important in the lit. between the Testaments. It is generally conceived of physically, the soul coming from Sheol, or some other place, to be united with the body. Sometimes it is general—both the righteous and the wicked are raised (Apoc Moses 41:3). God will fashion men’s bodies just as they were in life, so that they may be recognized (Sib. Oracles, IV, 179f., 2 Baruch 50). Sometimes the resurrection is limited to the righteous, as in certain of the Testaments of the Patriarchs; for example, the affirmation that the godly alone will be raised, esp. the martyrs (Test. of Judah 25:4), which seems to be the thought also of 2 Maccabees 7:9.

As for the nature of the resurrected body, the maimed and broken limbs of the martyrs will be restored. Enoch 62:15, 16 says the bodies of the righteous will be clad in garments of glory. In 2 Baruch 50 is expressed the quaint notion that in the general resurrection, the bodies of men will be exactly as in life; but that the bodies of the righteous will gradually change until they surpass the angels and are like the stars in glory, whereas the wicked, observing this wondrous transformation, will see their own bodies waste away and decay.

E. The judgment. The judgment is sometimes conceived realistically, i.e., as involving the destruction of the wicked by the messiah or the saints; sometimes forensically, i.e., as a court decision based on men’s works. The former view is analogous to the OT prophets, the latter to the pattern of Daniel 7:9, 10, where the “ancient of days,” seated on a throne, judges out of open books (cf. Enoch 47:3; 90:2-27; 4 Ezra 7:33). In some of the sources (Test Job 5:10f., Enoch 10:6; 16:1), fallen angels as well as men are judged. The judge is either God or the messiah, and the judgment takes place either at the beginning of the messianic kingdom, or at its close, or, if no such kingdom is expected, at the end of the world. Rewards and punishments according to one’s just deserts are impartially meted out. The ungodly are consigned to some place of eternal torment, generally in the lower parts of the earth where they are plagued by fire and sometimes eaten by worms. The righteous, on the other hand, enter into Paradise, which is either heaven or a renewed and transformed earth. There they will have rest from oppression and death, and enjoy the presence of God, or of the messiah, forever.

IV. Eschatology of the NT

A. Introduction. In eschatology, as in all things, the NT grows out of the Old. It also reflects the intertestamental period, insofar as this period is marked by a development of thought that is consonant with the basic thrust of the NT.

According to the NT, the Incarnation is the fulfillment of the OT promise of salvation. This fulfillment is of such a nature that it anticipates a final consummation that is still future. The historic work of Christ (His life, death and resurrection) may be called a “realized” eschatology, yet it is a partial realization that anticipates a final realization at the Second Coming of Christ, an event that is still in the future. According to the writer of Hebrews (1:2), the “last days” of which the prophets spoke, are here. As the promise of the Spirit (Joel 2:28) has been fulfilled in the outpouring of Pentecost, those who have the Spirit of Christ have already experienced the “powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:5). Therefore, the final eschatological hope of the return of Christ is not merely a hope, as though it were altogether a future event; it is a hope that has already become a historical reality. It is the consummation of what was already accomplished in the first coming, esp. in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

This dialectic of an eternal life that is already a historical reality, and yet remains a future hope, permeates the entire NT. It is a past reality that the apostles have seen with their eyes, looked upon, and touched with their hands (1 John 1:1); yet they confess that they still walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7), and that only when “he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). In the resurrection of Christ and the quickening by His Spirit are the first fruits of the heavenly order; believers are those upon whom the “end of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11). At the same time, the “last day” still lies in the future; Christians are still looking for the Savior (Phil 3:20) and confess that beyond this world, there is a world to come (Eph 1:21).

B. The teaching of Jesus. What Jesus taught concerning the future is a matter of dispute. The older liberal school believed that the eschatological pronouncements attributed to Jesus in the gospels are not to be taken seriously. They viewed these pronouncements as the product of the Jewish-Christian community that adapted Jewish apocalyptic theories to Christian needs. If indeed Jesus did use such terms, it was an accommodation to His contemporaries, and men must construe them in a way that is consonant with the basic ethical principles at the core of His teaching. In such a view, a literal acceptance of the Parousia robs it of its true meaning. Because Christ comes as Judge, not finally in the last day, but always, in the providential moments of life, the “coming” (parousia) of Christ as Judge provides an impulse to moral conduct. Christ’s eschatological language may be viewed as a picture of the truth of His present and continued judgment of mankind, not a description of actual future events. Even the imagery of coming in the clouds is not too much for the splendor of this thought of a present and perennial judgment.

In the school of “consistent eschatology” (Albert Schweitzer), the opposite view is taken. Jesus is interpreted as an apocalyptist for whom eschatology was anything but a peripheral matter of accommodation. Jesus regarded Himself as fulfilling the role of Daniel’s “Son of man” who would come in the clouds of heaven and set up the glorious kingdom of God on earth. This interpretation of the data of the gospels has been credited with “rediscovering” eschatology in the Christian message. However, according to Schweitzer and his disciples, Jesus taught that these events were to occur in the lifetime of the generation then living. Obviously things did not turn out this way and Jesus died a disillusioned martyr, when His expectation of the imminent end of the world failed to materialize. His apostles clung to the hope He would soon return in glory, but the delay of the Parousia gradually compelled a major adjustment in the theology of the Church. In this process of adjustment, Jesus was metamorphosed into the Christ of dogma, having little to do with the man who lived in history.

The modern “form critical school” (Rudolph Bultmann) gives little support to this view. It is doubtful, according to Bultmann, that one can know much about Jesus beyond the fact that He heralded the coming kingdom by calling men to repentance. For Bultmann, not only did the kingdom not come in Jesus’ lifetime, but there is no way of saying it will ever come, except the vertical act of God in each individual life, whereby the moment becomes “existential,” resulting in one’s living “authentically.”

The view that is most faithful to the text of the gospels accords with the general position, outlined in the introduction to this article. Jesus believed that the eschatological teaching of the OT prophets received its fulfillment in His life and ministry. He began His ministry, therefore, by proclaiming that the kingdom of God was about to be realized among men. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2). In fact, in the person of Jesus, the kingdom was already present. (One plausible tr. of Luke 17:21 is “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”) At the same time, there is a sense in which the kingdom was not fully realized in Jesus’ own lifetime, but remains a future hope. The day is yet coming when all men will be judged, and their final destiny determined (Matt 11:21-23; Luke 10:13-15). Men are admonished to prepare for the day that shall usher in the glorious kingdom (Mark 13:33-37; Luke 12:42-46). There is in Jesus’ teaching respecting the kingdom both present reality and future expectation.

As the Messiah, Jesus looked upon Himself as the Mediator of the kingdom to God’s people, both in its present form and in its glorious consummation. As for the time of the consummation, the question of its imminence is indeed central. The view that Jesus was mistaken in this matter, is by no means the only plausible reading of the evidence. The verses giving the greatest difficulty are those in which Jesus said that some shall not taste of death till they see “the kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1; Luke 9:26, 27), or until they see the “Son of man coming in a cloud with power” (Luke 21:27-33; cf. Matt 16:27f.; 24:34).

The context in which these sayings are given is important to their understanding. When the disciples pointed out the magnificent Temple structure, Jesus predicted that the day would come when there would not be one stone standing upon another in that vast edifice. The startled disciples drew the conclusion that such a catastrophe could mean nothing less than the end of the world. “Tell us,” they urged, “when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming (parousia) and of the close of the age?” (Matt 24:3). Jesus answered this question the way it was put; that is, He wove together into a single tapestry a grand apocalyptic scene, made of two strands; on the one hand—the destruction of Jerusalem, and on the other—His own coming in the clouds “with power and great glory.”

To account for this procedure, it must be remembered that He was uttering a prophecy, and that prophetic perspective involves what has been called a “timeless sequence,” a telescoping of events that, in their fulfillment, may be chronologically separated from each other. (The prophets of the OT, for example, spoke of the coming of the Messiah without distinguishing between His coming in humiliation, and His coming in glory.) As an artist imposes a threedimensional landscape on a two-dimensional canvas, so Jesus spoke of the fall of Jerusalem and the final judgment of the evil world system as one event—which they are theologically but not chronologically. He did this, not only because He spoke prophetically, but because the lesser event—the fall of Jerusalem—is a paradigm of the greater event, the fall of this sinful world order, when God shall judge the wicked and vindicate the righteous at the end of the age. Had nothing happened in Jesus’ generation corresponding to His prophecy, then one would have every reason to believe nothing ever would, and that Jesus made a fatal mistake. But because Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed in a.d. 70, men are confirmed in their faith that this prophecy, so strikingly fulfilled in miniature, will one day be fulfilled in the larger theater of world history. Therefore, the eschatological hope of the Second Advent, so essential to the Christian faith, is grounded in the teaching of Jesus Himself, and this teaching is by no means an illusion.

C. Events leading up to the Second Coming. The Second Advent is really a whole complex of events, some of which precede, some of which follow the appearing of Christ in glory.

The events leading up to the parousia, should not be used to predict the time of Christ’s coming, as some have vainly done. Indeed, Jesus said that no one, except the Father, knows the day or hour of His return (Mark 13:32). Though one cannot know the times and seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority (Acts 1:7), yet the NT has much to say about the manifestation of evil prior to the coming of the Lord, an evil that will be intensified as the time of the end draws near. Although hope is already a reality in this age, yet it is an evil age (Gal 1:4). Living in an era that is under the power of Satan, Christians are to beware of false messiahs (Matt 24:5) and antichrists (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7). Jesus compared the time of the coming of the Son of man to the days of Noah (Luke 17:26f.), and Paul warned that “evil men and imposters will go on from bad to worse” (2 Tim 3:13).

As early as the Book of Daniel, this demonic principle of evil, opposed to Christ and His kingdom, an evil that will esp. characterize the end time, begins to take on personal embodiment. Daniel’s prophecy of the “little horn” (Dan 7:8, 23-26), is perhaps a veiled, apocalyptic reference to Antiochus Epiphanes, typifying some evil eschatological personage who will appear at the end of the age. Jesus warned of the “desolating sacrilege” (“abomination of desolation,” Matt 24:15, KJV, cf. Dan 11:31; 12:11), and Paul spoke of “a man of lawlessness” (“man of sin,” KJV) who will be revealed in his own proper time (2 Thess 2:3, 4).

This “son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess 2:3, 4), may be the subject of the visions of evil in Revelation 13, which describes two beasts appearing, one coming up out of the sea, the other out of the land; the former representing world empire, the latter religious apostasy. Both were empowered by the dragon, who symbolizes the devil. (This evil triumvirate—beast, false prophet, dragon—comprise a sort of demonic counterpart to the Trinity.) Many interpret both the first “beast” in Revelation and the “man of sin” in Paul as a political ruler of great power, appearing at the end of the age, who will use apostate religion to serve his blasphemous ambition to be worshiped as God (Rev 13:8, 12), following the example of the ancient Rom. emperors. Not only will he impose economic sanctions on all who will not submit to this sacrilege (Rev 13:16, 17), but he will also threaten a general and ruthless persecution against all the godly. Thus the Church of the end time, as was the Early Church, will be a martyr church sealing its witness with its own blood. This dire threat of persecution has often been seen as a fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy of a time of “great tribulation” (Matt 24:21), which will be shortened for the elect’s sake (v. 22).

This time of bold defiance of heaven and persecution of the saints is also pictured in Revelation as a time of divine judgment upon the wicked, which shall culminate in the final destruction of Satan and his emissaries. Under the symbolism of trumpets and bowls, the seer of the Revelation sets forth the plagues and disasters with which God, in His wrath, shall vex and destroy the beast and those who worship him (Rev 8; 9; 14; 16). Against these terrible visitations of heaven the people of God will be protected, being sealed as His own (Rev 7:1-8) and beatified by martyrdom (Rev 7:9-17).

Other interpreters look upon these predictions of eschatological evil in personal categories, as fulfilled throughout Christian history. In such a view, there is no one anti-christ par excellence, nor one period that may be designated the tribulation, at the end of the age. All who are opposed to Christ and His Church, from Nero and his successors in ancient times to Hitler and Stalin in modern times, and any in the future, who shall emulate their example, are a manifestation of the principle of antichrist, and the Church that they persecute is the church in “tribulation.”

D. The Second Advent. The event climaxing the judgments in which “this age” will end, bringing in the full salvation of the righteous in the “age to come,” is the advent of Christ. Revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, the Lord Jesus will inflict vengeance upon those who do not know God nor obey the Gospel. At the same time, He will be glorified in His saints and will marvel at the number who have believed (2 Thess 1:7f.). The event is often described in terms that reflect the OT usage of the “day of the Lord” (Acts 2:20; 1 Thess 5:2; 2 Pet 3:10). Whether it be called “the day of God” (2 Pet 3:12) or “the last day” (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54, et al.) or just “that day” (Matt 7:22, et al.), there can be no doubt that the figure of the glorious Christ will be at the center of this final revelation of God. The NT phrases, the “day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14); the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:8); the “day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6); and the “day of Christ” (Phil 1:10; 2:16), all designate the time of the Second Advent.

Besides the general term “day” are several other technical terms used in the NT to describe the coming of Christ for the second time (Heb 9:28). The most common is parousia (1 Cor 16:17), which means “presence” in the sense of a “becoming present” or “arrival.” It is used in Hel. Gr. of the visit of a ruler. So Jesus will “visit” this earth by way of a personal presence. Christ’s appearance also is called an apokalupsis, that is, a “revelation” or “unveiling” (1 Cor 1:7). Then will be manifest the glory that He now has, being exalted at the Father’s right hand. A third term is epiphaneia, from which comes the Eng. word “epiphany,” meaning “appearance.” In 2 Thessalonians 2:8 is a reference to the “epiphany of his parousia,” which is difficult to interpret because of the closeness of the meaning of the two terms. Some have suggested that the two terms denote two distinct events, but there is nothing in the context to suggest that the parousia is a secret event separate in time from the epiphaneia. The two terms seem rather to be related as dawn to noon day, the epiphany being the full realization of the parousia. Scholars sometimes tr. the verse “the appearance of His coming.”

Even the most cursory review of the language with which the NT describes the return of Christ shows how impossible it is to construe Christ’s Second Advent as a slow, sure, spiritual conquest, in which the ideals of Jesus will yet win universal assent and His Spirit dominate the world, as in the older liberal theology (cf. Douglas MacIntosh, Theology as an Empirical Science, and William Adams Brown, Christian Theology in Outline). Rather than a tendency of history toward an ideal, the Second Coming is presented as an event, like in kind to the Resurrection and Ascension. The difference is that in His resurrection and ascension, Christ appeared “not to all the people, but to us [apostles] who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:41). When He returns a second time, it will be a public event: “Every eye will see him” and “all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him” (Rev 1:7). It will be a glorious coming: “They will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26, and parallels). It will be personal: the same Jesus (Acts 1:11) who walked with His disciples in Galilee and Judea, will come again to take His own to Himself (John 14:3).

E. The resurrection of the dead. Though even the wicked will be raised when Christ comes (John 5:28, 29; Acts 24:15; Rev 20:12, 13), in the NT, resurrection is principally set forth as a blessing, i.e., the redemption of the body from the power of death and the grave. The apostolic proclamation of the resurrection is based on the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. It is He who, by His resurrection, “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light”.

The new age manifests itself not only in Jesus’ resurrection, but also in the new life that believers experience in Him (Rom 6:4; Eph 2:5, 6; Col 3:1-3), which makes the Church an eschatological community. This new order of existence, however, is preliminary and anticipatory; it is a life that will be fully realized only in the resurrection at the parousia. Jesus is “the firstfruits of them that sleep” (1 Cor 15:20, KJV), and “we know that when he appears we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). There is this confident hope because many have already been delivered from death to life; “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Rom 8:11). Then shall this mortal put on immortality, this corruption shall put on incorruption, then death shall lose its sting and be swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:53f., free tr.).

The resurrection is not a reanimation of the “flesh” which contradicts 1 Corinthians 15:50, that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.” Rather, the new body will be “spiritual” (1 Cor 15:44), a paradoxical expression that teaches that in the life to come, the mode of existence will be neither wholly similar nor wholy dissimilar to the present mode. The body is the mark of man’s creaturehood, the outward principle of his individuality. The Christian hope is not escape from the body, as a prison house of the soul, but deliverance from this mortal body of flesh and blood, to be clothed in a glorious body like that of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The concept of a bodily resurrection is a prime illustration of how the Gospel was foolishness to the Greeks. Busying themselves collecting mental bric-a-brac, the Athenians indulged Paul with condescending curiosity concerning the new gods he was setting forth; but when he propounded the idea of a resurrection of the body, they walked away mocking (Acts 17:32). This pagan incredulity has been given a new impetus by modern “scientism,” the view that the realm of natural causality defines the possibilities of reality. Dead bodies just do not rise. It should not be supposed that resurrection means the reassemblage of the same atoms in the same molecular pattern that existed when the body was laid in the grave. Though such a concept is implied in some of the Jewish Ap. Lit., the NT does not speculate on the “how” of the resurrection. Paul admitted that he was telling a “mystery” (1 Cor 15:51) when he spoke of such things in answer to the questions, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (1 Cor 15:35). He used the apt figure of a germinating seed to illustrate continuity with a difference. Yet, this is merely a picture drawn from nature.

Perhaps another illustration from nature may illumine the mystery of man’s resurrection in a small way. In the Middle Ages, an indestructable “bone of immortality” was postulated as the nexus between the body of this life and that which would rise from the grave in the last day. By contrast, modern science teaches that the body cells, including its solid bony frame, not only turns to dust in death, but even in life perishes without a trace. In a relatively few years, the human body is renewed completely. When a man looks at a picture of a young boy, he may say, “This is I,” for there is continuity at the physical level; the pattern of the hair, the pigmentation of the skin and eyes, even such individual factors as a birthmark, all underscore the sameness of the person according to his bodily nature. Yet the body of the child in the photo is not “literally” the same body; it is an entirely different body, several times removed from the one he now has. If this continuity in change can be maintained in this life, who is to say that death is such a radical destruction of the body that it cannot be overcome by the power of God?

The Christian doctrine of the resurrection rests not on any analogy of nature, but on the fact of the resurrection of Christ, which is without analogy, a setting aside of that fundamental law of entropy that has marked the entire system of nature with the sign of death. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain...you are still in your sins....those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1 Cor 15:14ff.). But, knowing that Christ has risen and become the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” there is hope that when He comes, all Christians shall share His resurrection, for if God raised his crucified Son, will He not raise His people by the same Spirit?

At the moment of the resurrection, those who are alive shall be changed “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Cor 15:52) and all together shall be “raptured,” i.e., “caught up...to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess 4:17). The wicked, on the other hand, supposing they are safe, shall be surprised as by a thief in the night (Matt 24:42, 43) and overtaken by the sudden destruction that shall come upon them (1 Thess 5:2f.). Though they be working in the same field, grinding at the same mill, even sleeping in the same bed with the righteous (Matt. 24:41; Luke 17:34, 35), they shall be left behind, as were the sinners in Noah’s day (Matt 24:38, 39), and the inhabitants of Sodom, when Lot departed the doomed city. Then the wheat shall be separated from the tares (Matt 13:24-30, 36-43), and the sheep from the goats forever (Matt 25:32, 33).

F. The intermediate state. What is the state of the dead who await the voice of the Son of man at the last day (John 5:25)? For the writers of the OT, the dead did not cease to exist, but entered a shadowy existence in the undifferentiated silence of the nether world. Removed from the presence of the living God, the righteous devoutly hoped that God would not abandon them to Sheol, but give them to know the joy of life in His presence (Job 19:25, 26). It was not until the inauguration of the NT age and the resurrection of Christ, that this hope was given a clearer definition. Even in the light of NT revelation, however, the question of whether the dead must await the resurrection before they enjoy the conscious fellowship of God, or whether they will “sleep” until the powerful summons awakens them from death, is hard to answer with certainty.

Originally held by certain sects of the Anabaptists and by the Socinians, the idea of “soul sleeping” has been revived in modern times by various groups of Millennial Dawnists and Adventists, and is even suggested by such a critically trained scholar as Oscar Cullmann. Paul’s pithy statement, to be “absent from the body [and] to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8 KJV), a statement pregnant with hope for all Christians, is understood to reflect an immediacy of sequence in the consciousness of the individual only. When a Christian closes his eyes in death, the next moment, as far as he is concerned, he will be with the Lord, though countless millennia may have intervened. Thus the basic structure of the NT, which is death, followed by resurrection, is preserved; at the same time, the postponement of the resurrection, until the parousia, is maintained.

Such a view also makes possible a more consistent application of the NT emphasis on the unity of man. Traditionally, because of the interval of time between death and the resurrection, it has been taught that the soul continues in a disembodied form, intermediate between its present and its final state. This view is not without its difficulties, because it lends itself so readily to a more Gr. than Biblical mode of conception. The Greeks, suspicious of the body as evil, conceived salvation as the liberation of the soul from its fleshy prison house, that it might ascend to its proper element. They believed in immortality, but not resurrection. So concerned have some contemporary Biblical scholars been to escape this Gr. way of thinking, and to stress the Biblical concern with the redemption of the whole man, including the body, that they have affirmed that the resurrection takes place immediately upon death. The obvious teaching of the NT, that the resurrection occurs for all at the last day, is construed as a mark of man’s temporal perspective. When one steps over the line in death, he shall see how, im nunc aeternum, “being present with the Lord” at the moment of death, and “meeting him in the air” at the parousia, are different ways of speaking of a simultaneous event.

Another suggestion is that in the “intermediate state” a body is given in anticipation of the resurrection body. The soul, though it has not yet been given a resurrection body, is not disembodied at death. Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth: “Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (